EDITH’S CRUSHED LILIES
“Rupert,” said his mother, “I want you to give me your arm to my room, I
am going to bed.”
“Certainly,” he answered, “but wait one minute, dear. I have to take
that eight o’clock train to-morrow morning, so I will just say good-bye
to Tabitha, as I shan’t come back again.”
Mrs. Ullershaw breathed more freely. If there were anything in the wind
about Edith he would not be taking the eight o’clock train.
“Go,” she said; “I’ll wait.”
Lady Devene was by herself, since amongst that gay throng of young
people no one took much note of her, seated in a big oak chair on a
little dais at the end of the hall far away from the fire and hot water
coils, for she found the heat oppressive. As he made his way towards her
even the preoccupied Rupert could not help noticing how imposing she
looked in her simple black dress, which contrasted so markedly with her
golden hair and white and massive face, set up there above them all,
elbow on knee and chin on hand, her blue eyes gazing over their heads at
nothingness. In reality, the miserable woman was greeting the New Year
in her own fashion, not with gaiety and laughter, but with repentance
for her sins during that which was past, and prayers for support during
that which was to come.
“Ach, Rupert!” she said, rousing herself and smiling pleasantly as she
always did at him, “it is kind of you to leave those young people and
their jokes to come to talk with the German frau, for that is what they
call me among themselves, and indeed what I am.”
“I am afraid,” he said, “I have only come to say good-night, or rather
good-bye, for I must go to town to-morrow morning before you will be
down.”
She looked at him sharply.
“So I have driven you away with my tale of troubles. Well, I thought
that I should, and you are wise to leave this house where there is so
much misery, dead and living, for no good thing can happen in it, no
good thing can come out of it—”
“Indeed,” broke in Rupert, “that is not why I am going at all, it is
because—” and he told her of the visit he must pay.
“You do not speak fibs well like the rest of them, Rupert; you have some
other reason, I see it on your face, something to do with that dreadful
Dick, I suppose, or his—ach! what is the English word—his flame, Edith.
What? Has she been playing tricks with you too? If so, beware of her; I
tell you, that woman is dangerous; she will breed trouble in the world
like his lordship.”
Rupert felt very angry, then he looked at that calm, fateful face which
a few hours before he had seen so impassioned, and all his anger died,
and was replaced by a fear which chilled him from head to heel. He felt
that this brooding, lonely woman had insight, born perhaps of her own
continual griefs; that she saw deep into the heart of things. He who
understood her, who sympathised with, even if he did not entirely adopt
her stern religious views, who knew that prayer and suffering are the
parents of true sight, felt sure that this sight was hers. At least he
felt it for a moment, then the unpleasant conviction passed away, for
how could its blackness endure in the light of the rosy optimism of
new-risen and successful love?
“You are morbid,” he said, “and although I am sure you do not wish to be
so, that makes you unjust, makes you pass hard judgments.”
“Doubtless it is true,” she replied, with a sigh, “and I thank you for
telling me my faults. Yes, Rupert, I am morbid, unjust, a passer of hard
judgments, who must endure hard judgment,” and she bowed her stately,
gold-crowned head as before the appointed stroke of wrath, then held out
her hand and said simply: “Good-bye, Rupert! I do not suppose that you
will often come to see me more—ach! why should you? Still if you do, you
will be welcome, for on you I pass no hard judgments, and never shall,
whatever they say of you.”
So he shook her hand and went away saddened.
Giving his mother his arm, for she was very infirm, Rupert led her
quietly out of a side door and down the long passages to her room, which
was next to his own at the end of the house, for stairs being difficult
to her, she slept on the ground floor, and he at hand to keep her
company.
“Mother,” he said, when he had put her in her chair and stirred the fire
to a blaze, “I have something to tell you.”
She looked up quickly, for her alarm had returned, and said: “What is
it, Rupert?”
“Don’t look frightened, dear,” he replied, “nothing bad, something very
good, very happy. I am engaged to be married to Edith, and I have come
to ask your blessing on me, or rather on both of us, for she is now a
part of me.”
“Oh, Rupert, you have that always,” she answered, sinking back in her
chair; “but I am astonished.”
“Why?” he asked, in a vexed voice, for he had expected a flow of
enthusiasm that would match his own, not this chilly air of wonderment.
“Because—of course, nobody ever told me so—but I always understood that
it was Dick Learmer whom Edith cared for, that is why I never thought
anything of her little _empressé_ ways with you.”
Again, Rupert was staggered. Dick—always Dick, first from Lady Devene
and now from his mother. What could be the meaning of it? Then again
optimism came to his aid, he who knew full surely that Dick was nothing
to Edith.
“You are mistaken there for once, mother,” he said, with a cheerful
laugh. “I knew from the first what she thought about Dick, for she spoke
very seriously to me of him and his performances in a way she would
never have done if there were anything in this silly idea.”
“Women often do speak seriously of the bad behaviour of the man of whom
they are fond, especially to one whom they think may influence him for
good,” replied his mother, with the wistful smile which she was wont to
wear when thinking of her own deep affection for a man who had deserved
it little.
“Perhaps,” he said. “All I have to say is that if ever there was
anything—and I know there wasn’t—it is as dead as last month’s moon.”
Mrs. Ullershaw thought to herself that this simile drawn from the
changeful moon, that waxes anew as surely as it wanes, was scarcely
fortunate. But she kept a watch upon her lips.
“I am very glad to hear it,” she said, “and no doubt it was all a
mistake, since, of course, if she had wished it, she might have married
Dick long ago, before you came into her life at all. Well, dearest, I
can only say that I wish you every happiness, and pray that she may be
as good a wife to you as I know you will be husband to her. She is
lovely,” she went on, as though summing up Edith’s best points, “one of
the most graceful and finished women whom I have ever seen; she is very
clever in her own way, too, though perhaps not in yours; thoughtful and
observant. Ambitious also, and will therefore make an excellent wife for
a man with a career. She is good-tempered and kind, as I know, for we
have always got on well during the years we have lived together. Yes,
you will be considered very fortunate, Rupert.”
“These are her advantages, what are her drawbacks?” he asked shrewdly,
feeling that his mother was keeping something from him, “though I must
say at once that in my eyes she has none.”
“Which is as it should be, Rupert. Well, I will tell you frankly, so
that you may guard against them if I am right. Edith likes pleasure and
the good things of the world, as, after all, is only natural, and she is
extravagant, which perhaps in certain circumstances will not matter.
Again, I hope you will never fall ill, for she is not a good nurse, not
from unkindness, but because she has a constitutional horror of all
ill-health or unsightliness. I have seen her turn white at meeting a
cripple even, and I don’t think that she has ever quite liked sitting
with me since I had that stroke, especially while it disfigured my face
and made the lower eyelid drop.”
“We all have failings which we can’t help,” he answered; “natural
antipathies that are born in us, and I am glad to say I am fairly sound
at present. So I don’t think much of that black list, mother. Anything
to add to it?”
She hesitated, then said:
“Only one thing, dear. It does strike me as curious that such a girl as
Edith should be so attached to men like Dick Learmer and Lord Devene,
for she _is_ fond of them both.”
“Relationship, I suppose; also the latter has been very kind to her, and
doubtless she is grateful.”
“Yes, most kind; indeed, he was her guardian until she came of age, and
has practically supported her for years. But it isn’t gratitude, it is
sympathy between her and him. They are as alike in character, mentally,
I mean, as—as they are in face.”
Rupert laughed, for to compare the blooming Edith with the faded,
wrinkled Devene, or even her quick humour that turned men and things to
mild ridicule, with his savage cynicism which tore them both to pieces
and stamped upon their fragments, seemed absurd.
“I can’t see the slightest resemblance,” he said. “You are cultivating
imagination in your old age, mother.”
She looked up to answer, then thought a moment, and remarked:
“I daresay that you are perfectly right, Rupert, and that these things
are all my fancy; only, my dear boy, try to make her go to church from
time to time, that can’t do any woman harm. Now I have done with
criticisms, and if I have made a few, you must forgive me; it is only
because I find it hard to think that any woman can be worthy of you, and
of course the best of us are not perfect, except to a lover. On the
whole, I think that I may congratulate you, and I do so from my heart.
God bless you both; you, my son, and Edith, my daughter, for as such I
shall regard her. Now, dear, good-night, I am tired. Ring the bell for
the maid, will you?”
He did so, and then by an afterthought said:
“You remember that I have to go away. You will speak to Edith, won’t
you?”
“Of course, my love, when Edith speaks to me,” the old lady replied,
with gentle dignity. “But why, under the circumstances, are you going?”
At that moment the maid entered the room, so he gave no answer, only
made a few remarks about the manner of his mother’s journey back to town
and kissed her in good-bye.
When the maid had left again Mrs. Ullershaw, as was her custom, said her
prayers, offering up petitions long and earnest for the welfare of her
beloved only son, and that the woman whom he had chosen might prove a
blessing to him. But from those prayers she could take no comfort, they
seemed to fall back upon her head like dead things, rejected, or
unheard, she knew not which. Often she had thought to herself how happy
she would be when Rupert came to tell her that he had chosen a wife, yet
now that he had chosen, she was not happy.
Oh, she would tell the truth to her own heart since it must never pass
her lips. She did not trust this gay and lovely woman; she thought her
irreligious, worldly, and self-seeking; she believed that she had
engaged herself to Rupert because he was the heir to a peerage and great
wealth, distinguished also; not because she loved him. Although her son
was of it, she hated the stock whence Edith sprang; as she knew now,
from the first Ullershaw, who founded the great fortunes of the family,
in this way or that they had all been bad, and Edith, she was certain,
had not escaped that taint of blood. Even in Rupert, as the adventure of
his youth proved, it was present, and only by discipline and self-denial
had he overcome his nature. But Edith and self-denial were far apart.
Yes; a cold shadow fell upon her prayers, and it was cast by the
beautiful form of Edith—Edith who held Rupert’s destiny in her hands.
Within a few feet of her Rupert also offered up his petitions, or rather
his paean of thanksgiving and praise for the glory that had fallen from
Heaven upon his mortal head, for the pure and beautiful love which he
had won that should be his lamp through life and in death his
guiding-star.
A while after Rupert had gone, half an hour perhaps, Edith, noticing
that Dick had left the hall, as she thought to see off the last of the
departing guests, took the opportunity to slip away to bed since she
wished for no more of his company that night. Yet she was not destined
to escape it, for as she passed the door of the library on her way up
stairs, that same room in which Rupert had proposed to her, she found
Dick standing there.
“Oh,” he said, “I was looking for you. Just come in and tell me if this
belongs to you. I think you must have left it behind.”
Carelessly, without design or thought, she stepped into the room,
whereon he closed the door, and as though by accident placed himself
between it and her.
“Well, what is it?” she asked, for her curiosity was stirred; she
thought that she might have dropped something during her interview with
Rupert. “Where is it? What have I lost?”
“That’s just what I want to ask you,” he answered, with a scarcely
suppressed sneer. “Is it perhaps what you are pleased to call your
heart?”
“I beg your pardon?” said Edith interrogatively.
“Well, on the whole, you may have reason to do so. Come, Edith, no
secrets between old friends. Why do you wear that ring upon your finger?
It was on Ullershaw’s this morning.”
She reflected a moment, then with characteristic courage came to the
conclusion that she might as well get it over at once. The same instinct
that had prompted her to become engaged to Rupert within half an hour of
having made up her mind to the deed, made her determine to take the
opportunity to break once and for all with her evil genius, Dick.
“Oh,” she answered calmly, “didn’t I tell you? I meant to in the hall.
Why, for the usual reason that one wears a ring upon that finger—because
I am engaged to him.”
Dick went perfectly white, and his black eyes glowed in his head like
half-extinguished fires.
“You false—”
She held up her hand, and he left the sentence unfinished.
“Don’t speak that which you might regret and I might remember, Dick; but
since you force me to it, listen for a moment to me, and then let us say
good-night, or good-bye, as you wish. I have been faithful to that old,
silly promise, wrung from me as a girl. For you I have lost opportunity
after opportunity, hoping that you would mend, imploring you to mend,
and you, you know well how you have treated me, and what you are to-day,
a discredited man, the toady of Lord Devene, living on his bounty
because you are useful to him. Yet I clung to you who am a fool, and
only this morning I made up my mind to reject Rupert also. Then you
played that trick at the shooting; you pretended not to see that I was
hurt, you pretended that you did not fire the shot, because you are mean
and were afraid of Rupert. I tell you that as I sat upon the ground
there and understood, in a flash I saw you as you are, and I had done
with you. Compare yourself with him and you too will understand. And
now, move away from that door and let me go.”
“I understand perfectly well that Rupert is the heir to a peerage and I
am not,” he answered, who saw that, being defenceless, his only safety
lay in attack. “You have sold yourself, Edith, sold yourself to a man
you don’t care _that_ for,” and he snapped his fingers. “Oh, don’t take
the trouble to lie to me, you know you don’t, and you know that I know
it too. You have just made a fool of him to suit yourself, as you can
with most men when you please, and though I don’t like the infernal,
pious prig, I tell you I am sorry for him, poor beggar.”
“Have you done?” asked Edith calmly.
“No, not yet. You sneer at me and turn up your eyes—yes, you—because I
am not a kind of saint fit to go in double harness with this Rupert, and
because, not being the next heir to great rank and fortune, I haven’t
been plastered over with decorations like he has for shooting savages in
the Soudan because, too, as I must live somehow, I do so out of Devene.
Well, my most immaculate Edith, and how do you live yourself? Who paid
for that pretty dress upon your back, and those pearls? Not Rupert as
yet, I suppose? Where did you get the money from with which you helped
me once? I wish you would tell me, because I have never seen you work,
and I would like to have the secret of plenty for nothing.”
“What is the good of asking questions of which you perfectly well know
the answer, Dick? Of course George has helped me. Why shouldn’t he, as
he can quite well afford to, and is the head of the family? Now I am
going to help myself in the only way a woman can, by prudent and
respectable marriage, entered on, I will tell you in confidence, with
the approval, or rather by the especial wish of George himself.”
“Good Lord!” said Dick, with a bitter laugh. “What a grudge he must have
against the man to set you on to marry him! Now I am certain there is
something in all that old talk about the saint in his boyhood and the
lovely and lamented Clara. No; just spare me three minutes longer. It
would be a pity to spoil this conversation. Has it ever occurred to you,
most virtuous Edith, that whatever I am—and I don’t set up for much—it
is you who are responsible for me; you who led me on and threw me off by
fits, just as it suited you; you who for your own worldly reasons never
would marry, or even become openly engaged to me, although you said you
loved me—”
“I never said that,” broke in Edith, rousing herself from her attitude
of affected indifference to this tirade. “I never said I loved you, and
for a very good reason, because I don’t, and never did, you or any other
man. I can’t—as yet, but one day perhaps I shall, and then—I may have
said that you attracted me—me, who stand before you, not my heart, which
is quite a different matter, as men like you should know well enough.”
“Men like me can only judge of emotions by the manner of their
expression. Even when they do not believe what she says, they take it
for granted that a woman means what she does. Well, to return, I say
that you are responsible, you and no other. If you had let me, I would
have married you and changed my ways, but though you were ‘attracted,’
this you would never do because we should have been poor. So you sent me
off to others, and then, when it amused you, drew me back again, and
thus sank me deeper into the mud, until you ruined me.”
“Did I not tell you that you are a coward, Dick, though I never thought
that you would prove it out of your own mouth within five minutes. Only
cowards put the burden of their own wrong-doing upon the heads of
others. So far from ruining you, I tried to save you. You say that I
played with you; it is not the truth. The truth is, that from time to
time I associated with you again, hoping against hope that you might
have reformed. Could I have believed that you meant to turn over a new
leaf, I think that I would have risked all and married you, but, thank
God! I was saved from that. And now I have done with you. Go your way,
and let me go mine.”
“Done with me? Not quite, I think, for perhaps the old ‘attraction’
still remains, and with most women that means repulsion from other men.
Let us see now,” and suddenly, without giving her a single hint of his
intention, he caught her in his arms and kissed her passionately.
“There,” he said, as he let her go, “perhaps you will forgive an old
lover—although you are engaged to a new one?”
“Dick,” she said, in a low voice, “listen to me and remember this. If
you touch me like that again, I will go straight to Rupert, and I think
he would kill you. As I am not strong enough to protect myself from
insult, I must find one who is. More, you talk as though I had been in
the habit of allowing you to embrace me, perhaps to pave the way for
demands of blackmail. What are the facts? Eight or nine years ago, when
I made that foolish promise, you kissed me once, and never again from
that hour to this. Dick, you coward! I am indeed grateful that I never
felt more than a passing attraction for you. Now open that door, or I
ring the bell and send for Colonel Ullershaw.”
So Dick opened it, and without another word she swept past him.
Edith reached her room so thoroughly upset that she did what she had not
done since her mother’s death—sat down and cried. Like other people, she
had her good points, and when she seemed to be worst, it was not really
of her own will, but because circumstances overwhelmed her. She could
not help it if she liked, or, as she put it, had been “attracted” by
Dick, with whom she was brought up, and whose ingrained natural weakness
appealed to that sense of protection which is so common among women, and
finds its last expression in the joys and fears of motherhood.
Every word she had spoken to him was true. Before she was out of her
teens, overborne by his passionate attack, she had made some conditional
promise that she would marry him at an undefined date in the future, and
it was then for the first and—until this night—the last time that he had
kissed her. She had done her best to keep him straight, an utterly
impossible task, for his ways were congenitally crooked, and during
those periods when he seemed to mend, had received him back into her
favour. Only that day she had at last convinced herself that he was
beyond hope, with the results which we know. And now he had behaved
thus, insulting her in a dozen directions with the gibes of his bitter
tongue, and at last most grossly by taking advantage of his strength and
opportunity to do what he had done.
The worst of it was that she could not be as angry with him as she
ought, perhaps because she knew that his outrageous talk and behaviour
sprang from the one true and permanent thing in the fickle constitution
of Dick’s character—his love for her. That love, indeed, was of the most
unsatisfactory kind. For instance, it did not urge him on to honest
effort, or suffice to keep him straight, in any sense. Yet it existed,
and must be reckoned with, nor was she upon whom it was outpoured the
person likely to take too harsh a view even of its excesses. She could
ruin Dick if she liked. A word to Lord Devene, and another to Rupert,
would be sufficient to turn him out to starve upon the world, so that
within six months he might be sought for and found upon the box of a
hansom cab, or in the bunk of a Salvation Army shelter. Yet she knew
that she would never speak those words, and that he knew it also. Alas!
even those insolent kisses of his had angered rather than outraged her;
after them she did not rub her face with her handkerchief as she had
done once that day.
Again, it was not her fault if she shrank from Rupert, whom she ought
to, and theoretically did, adore. It was in her blood, and she was not
mistress of her blood; for all her strength and will she was but a
feather blown by the wind, and as yet she could find no weight to enable
her to stand against that wind. Still, her resolution never wavered; she
had made up her mind to marry Rupert—yes, and to make him as good a wife
as she could be, and marry him she would. Now there were dangers ahead
of her. Someone might have seen her go into that library with Dick at
near one o’clock in the morning. Dick himself might drop hints; he was
capable of it, or worse. She must take her precautions. For a moment
Edith thought, then going to a table, took a piece of paper and wrote
upon it:
1st January. 2 A.M. To Rupert,—A promise for the New Year, and a
remembrance of the old, from her who loves him best of all upon the
earth.
E.
Then she directed an envelope, and on the top of it wrote that it was to
be delivered to Colonel Ullershaw before he left, and took from her
breast the lilies she had worn, which she was sure he would know again,
purposing to enclose them in the letter, only to find that in her
efforts to free herself from Dick, they had been crushed to a shapeless
mass. Almost did Edith begin to weep again with vexation, for she could
think of nothing else to send, and was too weary to compose another
letter. At this moment she remembered that these were not all the lilies
which the gardener had sent up to her. In a glass stood the remainder of
them. She went to it, and carefully counted out an equal number of
sprays and leaves, tied them with the same wire, and having thrown those
that were broken into the grate to burn, enclosed them in the envelope.
“He will never know the difference,” she murmured to herself, with a
dreary little smile, “for when they are in love who can tell the false
from the true?”